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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Automating Autism: Disability, Discourse, And Artificial Intelligence, Os Keyes
Automating Autism: Disability, Discourse, And Artificial Intelligence, Os Keyes
The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems shift to interact with new domains and populations, so does AI ethics: a relatively nascent subdiscipline that frequently concerns itself with questions of “fairness” and “accountability.” This fairness-centred approach has been criticized for (amongst other things) lacking the ability to address discursive, rather than distributional, injustices. In this paper I simultaneously validate these concerns, and work to correct the relative silence of both conventional and critical AI ethicists around disability, by exploring the narratives deployed by AI researchers in discussing and designing systems around autism. Demonstrating that these narratives frequently perpetuate a dangerously dehumanizing model …
“How Could You Even Ask That?”: Moral Considerability, Uncertainty And Vulnerability In Social Robotics, Alexis Elder
“How Could You Even Ask That?”: Moral Considerability, Uncertainty And Vulnerability In Social Robotics, Alexis Elder
The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique
When it comes to social robotics (robots that engage human social responses via “eyes” and other facial features, voice-based natural-language interactions, and even evocative movements), ethicists, particularly in European and North American traditions, are divided over whether and why they might be morally considerable. Some argue that moral considerability is based on internal psychological states like consciousness and sentience, and debate about thresholds of such features sufficient for ethical consideration, a move sometimes criticized for being overly dualistic in its framing of mind versus body. Others, meanwhile, focus on the effects of these robots on human beings, arguing that psychological …
Tactics Against Scheming Diseases, Brian Martin
Tactics Against Scheming Diseases, Brian Martin
The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique
Achieving good health can be thought of as a struggle against opponents—disease and unhealthy practices—that are imagined to be active agents, in a type of thought experiment. These opponents of health, to reduce outrage about their activities, draw on a standard set of tactics: cover-up of the threat, devaluation of victims, reinterpretation of what is happening, use of official processes to give an illusion of safety, and intimidation. To promote good health, each of these tactics can be countered, by exposure of the problem, validation of victims, reframing of what is happening, mobilisation of support, and resistance. Three case studies …